Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
Our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows
Interpretation
Our most confident beliefs can still be fragile and easily shaken by doubt.
This quote by Mark Twain suggests that despite our strong convictions and certainties, they are ultimately vulnerable to challenges and uncertainties. Just as sandcastles are easily displaced by the wind, our beliefs can be disrupted by moments of doubt, reminding us to approach our certainties with humility and an awareness of their fragility.
In practice
In a speech about embracing uncertainty in life.
Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
[I]t seems that the Cannibals of Europe are going to eat one another again. A war between Russia and Turkey is like the battle of the kite and snake; whichever destroys the other, leaves a destroyer the less for the world.
So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.
In the century now dawning, spirituality, visionary consciousness, and the ability to build and mend human relationships will be more important for the fate and safety of this nation than our capacity to forcefully subdue an enemy. Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don't want.
After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is.
Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream?
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